Month: October 2014

Team 6 brought the rain. Not the average almost-evaporates-before-touching-the-ground-rain, but full-on rain. With thunder, lightning and the whole shebang. With nine of the team members out at the 4WD training, we sought shelter under the roof at the scientists’ compound. They have a metal roof in their lapa and it was spectacular. Back at bush camp, merely 6 kms away, Heidi had been out checking box traps with Ligeus and wondered what all the fuss was about because no rain fell there. Such are the vagaries in the non-rainy season in Namibia.

Team 6 also brought the rhinos, two of them at their first dinner here in camp. The rhino pals were so comfortable near us, they laid down for a while, so we got a really nice front-row encounter in the comfort of our own home.

Monday was our box trap training up at the CS House box trap, and afterwards we split into three groups to check all the traps. Markus, Astrid and Christiane came with me and got the grand tour of the farm on the first day, because we were responsible for checking the Lodge trap (where we found hyaena prints walking just beside the trap) and the Mountain trap (where I forgot there is a camera trap so there will be nice pictures of my lower legs for the next data entry team to see).

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Today, Wednesday, the teams are working independently and enjoying the fruits of their two days of training. First order of business is changing the meat in the box traps, so it will be interesting to hear at tonight’s briefing how they’ve combined all their navigational, equipment, box trap and data sheet training for a successful day in the field. Most volunteers comment on how they cannot believe that after two days of training that we let them loose to work on their own in the field. Yes, we trust them. All the volunteers are so important, because we’re able to do so much more work all over the farm.

This morning the elephants gave Markus, Astrid, Christiane, Karen and I a merry chase. We searched for 4+ hours with no luck. We did telemetry in the north, south, east and west, and not a single beep. Yes, we even had fresh batteries in the telemetry receiver. Christiane and Markus even climbed up the Boma treehouse to have a listen. Well, no data are still data, so we have to record those as well.

On the way back from searching for the elephants, our team came across a large group of giraffe. Take a close look at the horns on the wee one. You’ll notice that they are crooked. That’s because when giraffes are born their nubs aren’t yet connected to their heads. Over time they grow and adhere to the animal’s head, becoming fully fused at 4-4.5 years (~7 years in females). But at birth they are loose and lie flat so they’ll ease through the birth canal.

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Thursday was our weekly vehicle game count. What a difference a week can make. Last week we were frozen solid on the backs of the trucks and counting game like crazy, and this week the weather was much warmer and the animal counts much less. The mountain team consisting of Mark, Helen, Uli and Ashley didn’t see much game on the game count, but they did see a lot of tracks. In fact, one track they followed led them straight to out box trap! There the leopard put on paw in the trap, then proving how very clever they are decided it was a bad idea and stepped out again without activating the trap. We can’t wait to see what leopard it was when we view the camera trap pictures!

Elephant observation teams were extremely unlucky after the first encounter. We scoured the farm for four days never finding them, getting random beeps but never seeing them. Finally on day 5 we went out and found followed their signal (and them) to the Sandposten waterhole. We had a lovely encounter for more than an hour, unfortunately never observing any feeding behaviour because they were so absorbed in the water. What was very interesting to all of us was how they chased off the cows: they blow water at them!

Vera’s game count team of Mara, Paul, Emma and Bruce didn’t see much game at all according to Helen and Uli doing data entry to my right, but they reported seeing the rhinos on the way back home. My team of Louize, Di, Vibeke and John on the east side of the farm didn’t see the bat eared foxes this week, but we did see a plentiful amount of the beautiful and delicate Steenbok. (Our data sheets were so full we didn’t want to brag that we also saw the rhino family group plus the big male.) We also counted among our animals a sable antelope.

The rest of the week’s activities hummed along swimmingly well. The teams worked hard even though it has been quite hot these past two weeks. We’ve changed around the activities a bit so that we’re doing the more sedentary activities in the afternoons, but for some activities like box traps and changing the bait meat in the traps, it’s just a hot, sweaty, smelly business no matter what time of day you do it.

A hearty thanks goes out to all the Team 5 volunteers. We wish you safe travels home.

Team 6? See you at the Josephine Gate on Sunday!

Continue reading “From our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia)”

Last Friday Team 5 set up a new box trap at the south fence. Last year’s volunteers reading this diary might know its location on the ridge on the fence south of JM House where we set the camera trap. I don’t think I’ve shared the attached camera trap picture yet. While it’s not the target species of this project, it is an awfully cute picture.

With the help of IZW scientists, Team 5 also set up a new box trap in the mountain area of Okambara this past week. We’ve stepped up our trapping efforts as you can tell and have borrowed two traps from the IZW in order to catch as many leopards as possible. There are still several females we are targeting to get collared, and we wouldn’t mind re-capturing the leopards we caught last year in order to refresh their collars.

So Team 5 now is lucky enough to have a total of six traps check. Traps are far enough apart that we’re spending considerable time driving all over Okambara both mornings and evenings, and sometimes we split up the box trap duties and combine them with other activities in order to make sure we’re operating at maximum efficiency.

Team 5 has been super helpful not just on science-related tasks and I have to commend them for their fantastic “dig in and do it” attitudes. For example; three nights ago Emil the male rhino came along and thought the fence surrounding our lapa was a pretty good place to get a good scratch. Unfortunately, the fence toppled inwards and left a lovely hole for every animal coming to the waterhole to crawl through, so Bruce, Ashley, John, Paul and Mark put their heads together, put their backs into it and got it fixed. Bruce, Ashley, John and Paul then went out with Ligeus to gather firewood too.

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Team 5 arrived on Okambara and was treated to three wonderful animal encounters during their first (half) day in the field. It wasn’t too difficult to identify the five rhinos. What made it an interesting encounter was that it was the first time we’d seen so many of them together, including the baby rhino. At dinner the same group of rhinos waltzed right through camp and took a long drink at the water hole. For dessert the elephants came to visit us.

Box trap training went well and on the first day out solo this morning’s box trap team had to release a honey badger. Vibeke and Paul must have nerves of steel – talk about a tough first animal to release from a trap! Now this afternoon’s box trap team will have their work cut out for them re-setting the trap…

Wednesday’s elephant team was led on a merry chase trying to locate them and it turns out they’d headed up to the mountains, where they almost never go. Meat was changed in all the box traps Wednesday afternoon by John, Helen, Dianne, Louize and yours truly. Despite our hanging some really juicy meat in them, there were no animals in the traps the next morning. Along the way Dianne and I learned the value of wearing gloves while retrieving abandoned ostrich eggs from the field – we stank all the way home.

Thursday was our vehicle game count day. The weather turned quite cold overnight and everyone was frozen by the time they reached their start points. Mark, Helen, Uli and Ashley reported not seeing many animals in the mountains, although they did solve the mystery of where the elephants have been hiding: they followed the tracks of the entire herd all the way down from the Lodge. Emma, Mark, Bruce and Paul were with Vera on Route 2, and they reported a still morning. Route 3 with me, well, we started the day off with a rare sighting of a pair of normally nocturnal bat-eared foxes. That wonderful sighting led us into counting almost every giraffe on the farm, plus seeing both rhino mommas and their babies. So John, Di, Louize, Vibeke and I felt quite pleased with our morning.

Continue reading “From our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia)”

Our second week was business as usual on Okambara. We played hide and seek with the elephants, picked up bagfuls of carnivore scats and changed more flat tyres than we could count. The team had several encounters with the baby rhinos and newborn giraffe, and the last morning Emil the male rhino came and serenaded Jan and Sonja with his rumbling grunts right outside their room.

Nerys and Keryn did hour upon hour of data entry and went through thousands of photos for us. It was gratifying to see L075, the male leopard we have just collared, on the camera trap acting normally. It was also interesting to see the other collared male (L052) come to the same water hole one hour and three minutes later!

Wednesday Vera took Nerys, Keryn, Jan and Rebekka into the field for a new activity collecting data and leftovers at kill sites. Vera had received satellite data from L074, the female leopard we collared in group 2, and the group spent the entire day in the field tracking down bits to collect. We were told at briefing that the team spent at least half their time hacking new trails for the truck and eventually just went up and down the mountains on foot.

Our last evening was a “briefing in the round” (with all fourteen of us sitting inside the fire pit) with Jan, our intrepid and inspirational 74-year-old Australian-Canadian reading the poem she’d written that afternoon.

Safe travels home team 4. Team 5? See you on 12 October…

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Continue reading “From our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia)”